Ready-Made Emergency Plans for Family Advocates and Childcare Educators

Emergencies take various forms and it can occur in the most unexpected moment. With that said, you should always remember that you are not capable of stopping certain emergencies, particularly natural phenomena.

From sudden earthquakes to floods, you have nothing to do other than follow an emergency plan. Here we look at how childcare centers should handle these emergency situations.

The Division of Emergency Plans

Emergency plans can have unique traits to them. However, there are also similarities that almost all emergency plans possess, and that’s the three phases. This consists of the plan for before the incident occurs, during the incident, and after all has transpired.

Preparedness—This should be done before the emergency strikes. This involves maintaining the utilities of the childcare center. All appliances should be working with no damage that can cause issues later, such as easily overheating or loose wires that may lead to a fire in the case of emergencies.

Response—This is the most basic part since it involves the actions that childcare staff should do during an emergency. These actions can vary depending on the steps taken in the Preparedness phase.

Recovery—This happens after the emergency transpired. It is when the staff take care of anything that was affected by the emergency. For example, search and rescue operations happen in case of any child missing. Another example is when people take out the boulders left by an earthquake, in case the rock falls on anyone.

Preparedness

The Preparedness phase is an important step that affects all other phases of an emergency plan. This is because it affects the Response phase as well as the Recovery.

For example, if utilities are prepared and there is much space to move through, the staff can easily help children go to the respective evacuation areas. Not only that, but it also reduces the chances of further damage.

Response

The first thing to do in this phase is to determine if an emergency is currently happening. Once the staff complete this, they are able to respond accordingly. During an emergency, it’s important to keep communications intact for parents and other workers.

This makes it easier to provide support to those who need it. This is directly related to preparedness since the more you prepare, the easier it is to respond to emergencies.

Recovery

Finally, Recovery happens after determining that the emergency has ended. When it does, it’s time to prioritize two things: (1) to gather everyone in one place, head counting for example; and (2) to take care of the mess left by the emergency.

This emergency plan is not that hard to come up with. The most important factor when it comes to emergencies is that the people remain calm during the incident since the plan would be pointless if they can’t fulfil their roles responsibly.